


the good-looking classmate

by norio



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 04:14:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8782549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/norio/pseuds/norio
Summary: Akaashi gets sick. Bokuto is magnanimous.





	

Bokuto pounded on the door, papers in his hand. He pounded again. And again, except this time, the door opened, and he narrowly missed swiping Akaashi’s face. Akaashi’s eyes were rimmed red, and he had wrapped himself up in a heavy cardigan. He peered tiredly at Bokuto, hand twitching like he was tempted to slam the door shut again.

“They said you were sick!” He must have been yelling too loud, because Akaashi glanced at his neighbors in some alarm. When nobody came out shaking a broom, Akaashi returned his attention to Bokuto.

“I’m not sick,” Akaashi rasped. “Thank you for visiting.” He moved to shut the door, but Bokuto jammed his elbow against the door frame. 

“I got your homework! And notes!” Bokuto waved the papers like a fan. “You had a classmate who was coming over but I stopped him and he gave me the notes so now you have to let me in, Akaashi, if you want to do well in school.” 

“Which classmate?” Akaashi feebly touched the sheets of paper. “The good-looking classmate?”

“Which one’s the good-looking classmate?”

“The one with the glasses.” Akaashi sniffled weakly. “And the face.”

“Now that you mention it, I guess the guy had glasses. And a face.”

“You can come in,” Akaashi said. “But don’t touch anything.” He turned and stumbled back into his house. Bokuto closed the door behind them. The white carpet covered the living room floor, meeting the pale tiles of the kitchen. A large television set had been placed in front of a sofa, charmingly decorated with expensive pillows. A bay window faced a blooming garden, where the winter frost had cultivated pristine icicles from hanging leaves. Akaashi, in his pajamas and cardigan, sat at the end of the very expensive sofa, hands gripped on his knees in some vague attempt at keeping everything nice and proper for his guest, while he sniffled loudly, coughed dryly, and looked like he’d rather fall on his face onto the carpet.

“Does it matter?” Bokuto asked, spreading the notes onto the glass coffee table. 

“What?” Akaashi groggily blinked at him. His nose was red.

“Does it matter which classmate I stopped?”

“Yes.” Akaashi grabbed three fistfuls of tissues and stuffed them against his nose. “I have been watching a significant amount of television dramas. A classmate brings over the homework, my parents are out on a business trip, and seduction occurs.”

“Really?” Bokuto eyed the trash bin full of tissues. “This is seductive?” 

“Yes,” Akaashi said, and slumped over the furry throw blanket. “Is the television on?”

“No?”

“I hear static,” Akaashi said vaguely, rubbing his ears. “Ah. Never mind. It stopped.”

“Okay! Akaashi, let’s get you back to bed.” Bokuto left the homework on the coffee table and helped Akaashi to his feet. Akaashi admirably stayed still for a second before crumpling against Bokuto, mumbling something about not how it happened in My Super Secret Love Romance, a remake of My Kinda Secret Love Romance. Bokuto muttered something about how Akaashi was heavy, because he was, and Akaashi reeled off several drama titles in apparent agony. 

Bokuto fluffed Akaashi’s pillows and pulled up the comforter. Akaashi was shivering, eyes glassy and unfocused, though his cheeks ran a hot red. It wasn’t that strange to be in Akaashi’s room—Bokuto had visited before, unannounced and certainly uninvited, and he was used to the messy order of the room. He found the cooling pads with the fan and the box of band-aids, which apparently made some sense to Akaashi.

“Akaashi,” Bokuto said, kneeling by his bed. Akaashi stared up at his ceiling vacantly, mouth set in an unhappy line. 

“I’m not sick,” Akaashi said, voice sounding like he had pulled it over shattered glass. He coughed wetly, and sunk back into his pillow. 

“You’re sick, Akaashi. And not just ‘cuz you watched twenty thousand dramas.” Bokuto clapped his hand onto Akaashi’s forehead. It felt clammy and burning to his touch. He stroked back a few strands of Akaashi’s hair, which had stuck to his forehead in damp tendrils. The back of Akaashi’s head was messy and rumpled, which Bokuto would find more endearing if Akaashi hadn’t clamped his eyes shut and looked like he was in vague pain. Bokuto peeled off the cooling pad and stuck it onto Akaashi’s forehead. After a moment, he broke out another cooling pad and placed it onto his own forehead. 

“What are you doing?” Akaashi had opened an eye.

“I just wanted to know if it worked!” 

Akaashi, with great deliberation and effort, raised a hand from his sheets. With effort that would truly put Hercules to shame, he wove a wobbly trail over to Bokuto’s forehead. Slowly, he sunk his finger into the cooling pad. 

“Boop,” Akaashi said. 

“I’m gonna make you something to eat, Akaashi! So don’t you worry about a thing!” Bokuto scrambled backwards out of the room, but he wasn’t running away. Running away would imply he was afraid, but he wasn’t afraid. He was actually being very brave by keeping an entire flight of stairs between him and Akaashi. Besides, he was a good cook, after all. Some people doubted him, but he was the master of at least three flavors of instant ramen. The trick was the hot water and the flavoring. The timing had to be just right or else the ramen would be scalding and flavorless. Yes. Instant ramen was forte. If he was a conductor, then ramen would be his fortissimo. 

Unfortunately, he was making congee. 

He batted the smoke into the whirring fans and frowned at the goopy pot. Akaashi’s parents were away enough on vacation that Bokuto was intimately familiar with where to hide the flaking pots behind the cabinet. Artful, and not cowardly at all. It was hard for him to sit on the stool and watch the congee bring itself to a warm boil, but he shoved his hands between his knees. Without him, Akaashi would not eat or sleep and he’d be weak and sick and say things like you aren’t that cool Bokuto-san, which was a personal affront to his honor, but he’d say it in his stuffed-up voice, slurring and shivering, so of course Bokuto had to be here and stop Akaashi from watching television and getting his mind all heated up by scandalous dramas. 

He dedicatedly set upon making three pots of congee. 

When he opened the door to Akaashi’s room, Akaashi had rolled to his side, now facing his wall. On hearing the door, Akaashi peeked over his shoulder. His face was still flushed, heated even with the blue cooling pad plastered over his forehead. 

“I made food,” Bokuto whispered. 

“Why are you whispering?”

“I don’t know,” Bokuto whispered.

Akaashi sat up, and Bokuto hurried to throw a jacket over Akaashi’s shoulder. Too hurried, the empty arm of the jacket hit Akaashi in the face. Akaashi kept his disdainful expression, despite his woozy mutterings and occasional shiver.

“I’m not very hungry,” Akaashi said. 

“Oh.” Bokuto resumed kneeling on Akaashi’s carpet. “We can save it for later. Is that how it works? I’ve never done this before, Akaashi, do you know how this works?”

“Maybe my good-looking classmate would have known,” Akaashi mumbled. He listlessly lifted the spoon to his mouth and slowly ate. 

“What does your good-looking classmate have that I don’t!”

“Glasses.”

When Akaashi finished half the bowl, he coughed and leaned back against his bed. Bokuto hurried to place the platter onto Akaashi’s desk, toppling over a stack of papers that he hoped weren’t important. When he turned around, Akaashi was unbuttoning his pajamas top.

“Wait! Akaashi!” Bokuto flung a hand to stop him and covered his eyes with his other hand. When he didn’t hear Akaashi’s rebuke, he peeked through his fingers to see Akaashi glaring at him and beckoning him closer. When Bokuto bent down, Akaashi whispered into his ear. 

“I’m hot.”

“Well, yeah. What does that have to do with this?” 

“I’m sweaty, so help me change.” Akaashi dropped his tone even lower. “I think I’m losing my voice.”

“Akaashi!” Bokuto lunged closer to him. Akaashi, alarmed, widened his eyes. “Akaashi, if you’re any softer, I won’t be able to hear you at all!” 

Akaashi mumbled something in a whisper. Bokuto didn’t hear him, but he suspected the muttering to be along the lines of ‘when have you ever listened to me,’ which he would refute, if he was actually listening to him. Instead, he opened Akaashi’s closet door, pushed setter dog away, and found a fresh shirt. He plucked a towel from the mass of towels beside the tissues and book about plums, thanks to Akaashi’s acute organizational skills. 

He peeled away the cooling pad to replace it with a fresh one. Helpfully, or unhelpfully, he brought the dry towel to wipe at Akaashi’s flush cheeks and neck and down his chest. He didn’t think he was being very gentle, despite his best efforts, but Akaashi only swayed back and forth. When Akaashi coughed, his entire body rattled, like a hoarse exhale was ripped from him. He felt too hot. Bokuto was used to touching Akaashi, in grabs and hugs and back pats, but he wasn’t used to Akaashi limply settling his head onto Bokuto’s shoulder and breathing in half-choked sighs. Bokuto buttoned the rest of Akaashi’s shirt and tried to slip off the bed smoothly to let him sleep. He tripped over a wadded-up pair of socks and fell loudly to the ground, but Akaashi only mumbled. 

“Akaashi?” Bokuto crawled up to peek at the bed. “You awake?” 

Akaashi had his eyes closed. The space between his eyes had wrinkled in some pain. His breathing was labored and weak. Bokuto held onto Akaashi’s hand. He rested his thumbs on Akaashi’s wrist, trying not to put too much weight on him.

“I’m sorry, Akaashi,” Bokuto whispered. “I didn’t know you’d get wet in the rain. I didn’t know you’d come over right away when I called you. It’s my fault you’re sick, isn’t it?” 

Akaashi’s hand felt hot, too. His fingers, usually strong and arched to set the ball, now felt compliant and weak. Even when Akaashi had lifted the spoon to himself, he had wrapped most of his fingers around the end. Bokuto rested his head on top of the bedcovers. 

“Akaashi,” he whined. “I’m sorry, Akaashi. I’m worried about you. I want you to get better. I miss you, Akaashi. When can we play again?” 

Because Akaashi was usually behind him, commenting with the verbal equivalent of an eye roll, and now he was lying in bed and making snuffling sounds. Bokuto bent his head and listened to Akaashi’s harsh breaths. 

\--

When Akaashi was ready to go back to school, Bokuto was there, at his house, bright and early.

“Are you wearing glasses?” Akaashi pulled down his face mask to speak. His voice still had an unusual rough edge.

“Oh, I didn’t think you’d noticed! Yeah, it makes me look more intellectual! But they’re not real.” Bokuto wiggled his finger through the empty frame, and winced when he accidentally poked himself in the eye. Akaashi stared at him, and then made his way down the walkway. 

“So how did you sleep? You’re not sick anymore?” 

“I was never sick,” Akaashi said hoarsely. “And I slept fine. Except for one night, when I had a nightmare. A very heavy owl sat on my chest and wouldn’t stop crying and saying useless things.”

“That’s a weird dream.”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, I wanted to say sorry. Again.” Bokuto rubbed the back of his head. “It was my fault you got sick and everything.”

Akaashi glanced at him, and muttered something that sounded like a horrified, so that wasn’t a dream.

“What?”

“Who told you that?” Akaashi frowned. 

“I thought of it myself! What, you don’t think I can be thoughtful, Akaashi? You don’t think I can be aware of my own actions?” Bokuto folded his arms across his chest. “And Konoha. Konoha said it was my fault and my responsibility and stuff like that.”

“Those are harsh statements.”

“Yeah. Yeah!” Bokuto shook his head. “And you usually don’t let people say that kind of stuff to me.”

“Well, I’m mostly jealous that I’m not the first to say it,” Akaashi said. “But what he said wasn’t true. This time. Though you can be capricious and willful, it was not your responsibility or your fault that I got sick. Or, in this case, didn’t get sick.”

“No, I gotta feel responsible. That’s why I came over, right?”

“So you don’t know your own reasoning for your actions,” Akaashi said dryly. He tucked a finger on the string of his face mask and yanked it down again, steam spilling from his mouth. “I wouldn’t recommend that you overthink this. When you like a person, you want to take care of them. That’s all there is to it.”

“I don’t really get it, Akaashi.”

“That’s fine.” Akaashi straightened Bokuto’s tie, enough dexterity in his fingers to nimbly tighten the knot. He patted down Bokuto’s coat and finally brushed his hand against Bokuto’s cheek. While Bokuto blinked, Akaashi smiled a thin, confident smirk. “In my dramas, they always figure it out in the end.”


End file.
